by Kennedy King
Rey couldn’t say it fast enough. The Dreamweaver’s jets couldn’t flare fast enough. The Terra Eagle was more than a durable ship, but even she couldn’t withstand the slice of a laser long-blade. The Eagle dropped away. Galia turned her head in a slowed distortion of time. She saw Corelia, out on the edge of her crystal tower. She saw the scorching red laser fire over her ship. The Dreamweaver launched ahead at the same time the laser blade sliced down. It screeched ahead across the lake without the back third of it, which had been cloven off. The Dreamweaver’s jet disks and rear cabins plunged to the depths of the dirgesnake. The rest of it skittered back and forth across the air, between heavy blasts from the Hammer. Galia, Rey and Deidra arced ahead and down, for the glowing lake.
“Critical damage sustained!” the Dreamweaver’s AI announced.
“We have any reserve jets left?” Galia screamed back. She clutched the trembling navigation bars, but they wouldn’t obey. They tilted down against their captain’s wishes.
“Analytic systems down!” the Dreamweaver said between siren whines.
“Looks like… five,” Deidra counted with a manual test on a terminal in the back of the bridge.
“It’s enough to make it, if we don’t take another hit,” Galia muttered.
“Unlikely,” said Rey. Galia’s hands loosened around the helm. She breathed deeply the congested, smoky air of the Dreamweaver one last time.
“Sorry old girl,” Galia said, and let go of the navigation bars. “Let’s get to the pods. It’s our only chance to get through this.”
Rey and Deidra followed their captain from the bridge down a twisting network of staircases. Heavy shells ripped through the hull, followed by spurts of fire and sparks. The crew shielded their heads until they reached the very bottom of the Dreamweaver. It let out on a steel grid over eight tubular chutes.
“Jump in and try not to get sick. They’ll deploy automatically,” Galia told Deidra. She nodded. The two stepped off their ledges, down into cushioned tubes. The pressure switched from their feet to their backs as the tubes went horizontal and slid into their escape pods. Galia listened for the third thunk and click. But one of their trio hadn’t jumped.
“Rey!” Galia called back up her chute, “The hell do you think you’re doing?” But, for the second time that day, Rey had seen something she couldn’t. He saw rosy water surge up into the lower end of the sinking Dreamweaver. He saw shells and thermal rays rip through the steel walls around him. Their ship was down, and the Hammer hadn’t relented. They wouldn’t, until the last trace of the Dreamweaver’s crew had been incinerated, escape pods included.
“Captains and their ships and all,” Rey called back down to Galia, “You know how it’s supposed to go down. The Dreamweaver was mine, you know.”
Rey hesitated for a brief moment, contemplating what he was about to do before he bid his captain farewell. “Win this for all of us!”
“Reymond, don’t you da-”
Rey never heard the rest of what Galia had to say. Her pod shot out from the underside of the Dreamweaver, into the waters of the Reverie Lake. Deidra’s was quick to follow. The controls popped out, into their hands.
“It… it rides like a hoverbike…” Galia murmured to Deidra over radio, water streaming down each of her cheeks, “Follow the lights... of the ships... above water. Don’t surface until… we get to the end.” Deidra nodded between sniffles of her own.
“A-a-alright.”
But the lights Deidra and Galia saw were hardly exclusive to what was above. Underneath them, the luminous scales of the hundred-meter-long dirgesnake flickered. It zipped right past them, in search of a bigger target. Like those on the crystal towers, the dirgesnake watched the Dreamweaver. By the will of its original captain, the ship rose from the waters one last time. Its reserve jets pushed it just high enough to wobble for the Hammer’s crystal tower. They fired everything they had left at its sleek black hull. Rey felt every shockwave and heat spike through the shieldless deck. Beneath the waters, the spectral song of the dirgesnake rose through the zipping escape pods. The audience above quieted, holding their breath to listen. To watch Rey and the Dreamweaver charge straight through enemy fire.
“Goodbye, Galia,” Rey smiled.
The Dreamweaver crashed into the base of a gigantic crystal spire. The names inscribed on it were lost in the explosion. So, too were Corelia and the rest of the Hammer. Bits of steel, glassy violet shrapnel and bodies rained down into the Reverie Lake. The dirgesnake sang its way to them. The deceased plunked, one by one, to a radiant, watery grave. The dirgesnake wrapped them in its coils, and dragged them deep, to peace, with a haunting lullaby.
Through a blurry screen of tears, Galia watched the beast wrap up the wreckage. It sunk to the dark. Galia and Deidra sped on a hundred feet beneath the two remaining crews.
They watched bursts of light through the warped lens of the Reverie waters overhead. The Terra Eagle spiraled through heavy fire from the Torrent survivors. Galia knew each weapon by the misfires that jumped through the water around her. Particle bombs opened orb-shaped voids in the water. The muffled crack it made sent a chill down her spine every time. Thermal beams dissipated long before they could reach her and Deidra’s depth. They turned from zipping red bolts to lines of bubbles that boiled away. Artillery shells splayed out across the shimmering underwater expanse, like deadly lead sunbeams.
Through it all, the Terra Eagle persevered above. She used her iron feathers to jerk abruptly to a safer path across the lake. She dipped down low enough for her talons to graze the waters over Galia and Deidra. She even flapped up into a backflip once to evade a particle bomb blast. In the rare moments of impact, she bounced back with the unparalleled grace of practice. It was all Galia could do to watch, to distract herself from the loss of the Dreamweaver and its captain.
She saw then, equally unbelievable, the sheer speed that immunized Daniel to enemy fire. He zipped ahead, feet per second faster than any gun the defeated crews had at their disposal. Thermal rays and shells had long since abandoned him as a mark. By the time any weapon could strike where he’d been, Daniel was two ship-lengths closer to the far shore. His ship became a black lightning bolt, destined to strike for victory. Galia traced the path of his ship, until a soft whine grazed across her eardrum. It seeped into her, through her. It slithered between the cells of her blood and the very tunnels of her marrow.
“Galia… you hear that?” Deidra came in through her pod transmitter.
“Hear it? I feel it. What the hell…” Galia trailed off. She hardly had a chance to theorize before lights rose up around her. The whine became a note in a gorgeous gentle song. Then something slid along the underside of her pod. The song dropped an octave. “Deidra, scramble! Get close to the surface and strafe back and forth. Keep it random!” It was the best Galia could come up with on the spot, given the way she’d watched the beast take down the Dreamweaver.
“Got it!” Deidra answered. She turned her pod up for the firebursts above. Galia grasped her controls to do the same. Whatever the dirgesnake had done with the others, it was satisfied with. It had two new targets now.
Galia jumped back in her seat when the coils glowed into existence, a bright fluorescent yellow, around her. The dirgesnake has been gone seconds ago; now it was everywhere around her. Can it camouflage itself? was the last thought Galia managed on her own, before its song blared through her being louder than ever. All thoughts then vacated, except for, what a nice sound.
Galia’s hands released from the controls. This wasn’t so bad, after all. The subtle quakes that rattled her pod were a bit like a massage. The tinkle of running water from the leak behind her head reminded her of her riverside home of years gone by. So what the pod was shrinking? Who needed all that space? What a nice sound… Galia closed her eyes.
“Hey, Galia!” the voice of fury itself invaded her paradise. Deidra rammed her pod straight into the scales of the dirgesnake. It loosened around Galia. Its song turned to a
shriek.
“What… what the hell?” Galia mumbled, between reality and illusion. Another ram from Deidra loosened the dirgesnake’s death grip. Galia saw everything now for its far less pleasant, real-world truth. Water had filled her pod halfway up her shins. Cracks had spiderwebbed across her pod’s glass shield. That nice sound was the lullaby of an enormous predator, which was now tied in a knot around her pod.
Galia jerked her controls up. Deidra drove hers down. The two pummeled the dirgesnake from the inside and out together. Its song turned into a screech. Its coils raced around in a mad dance of rings and spirals. It took Galia a few disoriented, pummeling seconds to realize what it was doing. Then an eye the size of her pod froze before her. Its pupil widened to fill its green socket with black. Then it narrowed to a slit of murder. The serpent arched its neck back. Its scaly lips popped open to glint a mouthful of wicked scimitars. The snap of its jaw was hauntingly audible through the water.
Especially for Galia, who had steered inches clear of it. She stomped the thruster pedal through sloshing water on her feet. Her pod ripped past the dirgesnake’s throat, straight for the rising banks of the shore. Deidra was feet behind. The dirgesnake was feet behind her. They raced it while sand scraped the bellies of their pods across the shallows.
“That’s it, folks! We have our winner!” Cybil announced above. The very second he did, the audience seemed to forget all about Rey and his sacrifice. They roared alive again. “Both Daniel and the Terra Eagle have survived the Reverie with their ships intact! This puts Daniel at three bonuses to win the Olympia Go-”
Cybil bit his lip in his stumble back from his podium when two steel eggs rocketed from the waters of the lake. They skidded across the shore so far below their competitor’s ships. No sooner than they’d stopped, both hatches popped open on top of them. Galia sprung up first. She lunged to Deidra’s pod, to offer her hand. The two shared but a moment’s glance to agree, without a word. Galia helped her up. The two gazed up to their rival crews, to Cybil, and the audience. With tears pouring over, Galia screamed:
“We challenge Daniel for the Olympia Gold Medal!” Cybil only stared, with his two bewildered, clashing-colored eyes.
“It’s within our rights as runners-up, with two bonuses!” Deidra shouted. Despite the fact they had no ship, she was right.
“We-we-well then, folks… it seems I’ll need to amend my previous statement. We have our… finalists.”
Chapter Seventeen: Finalists
Galia’s hand trembled up over her lips. She dropped another accursed purple capsule down the hatch. She forced her eyelids shut, sore from emptying her soul all over the regal area rug of her final hotel room. Galia savored every sensation of the little pill. The sandpaper grind down her throat. The arrival in her churning bile below. The subtle recession of thorned branches of agony from around her lungs. The pain eased back, as if to poke, instead of pierce her, but it never truly went away. Not anymore. Galia wrestled with the reflection in the taxotrol bottle, she tried not to give in to the desperate face looking back at her. More, it said, you need more! A sharp thud on the door shook her half back to awareness.
“Galia?” Deidra’s voice came through the gilded, hardwood door. Everything in this room was gilded, either by thin plates or accent threats of pure gold reserved for finalists.
“Yeah,” Galia called back with all the wind she could suck. Deidra pushed her way inside. Her new, alterable combat boots sunk an inch deep in the crimson-gold rug over rich, old Homeworld wood planks. She crossed to the bed and plopped beside Galia.
“What do you say we go down to the Forge? See what Clarabelle can do for us, or… well, there’s only one round left,” Deidra got around to saying. Galia watched her own reflection in the girl’s big, watery eyes. They said what her mouth wouldn’t dare. You’re not acting like you. You’re scaring me. “I thought we should go out for a drink together.”
“Are you… asking me on a date?” Galia forced her heavy face muscles to smirk.
“I am,” Deidra said, though she came off more as asking permission from her captain to use some high-clearance weapon. She was so stiff but so driven. Galia’s hand climbed up to Deidra’s face. It took everything she had just then to coordinate her fingers, to run them down the girl’s smooth cheek to her collarbone.
“It’s a shame. I still have so much to teach you,” Galia laughed, “But not tonight. Tonight I have to stay here.”
“Rey… would have told you to go have a drink for him,” Deidra tried. Galia humphed, her shoulders threatening to fold.
“Yeah, I know he would have… but screw what he says. I never listened to him before, so why start now?” Galia lied with a smile. Deidra had heard him counsel Galia more than once. He might have been the only person she listened to. “You go. Have a good time for both of us. I just need tonight. I’ll be better tomorrow. And the next day, even better.”
“Alright,” Deidra muttered. She got up to leave, but not before rushing to Galia’s side. Not before pressing their lips together, breathing her in. Deidra’s hand glided up Galia’s shirt, cupped around her breast. She grazed Galia’s nipple with her thumb, just lightly enough for it to tense into her firm palm. “I was going to do that on our date,” Deidra whispered and fell back.
“Mm- you were going to cop a feel in the Forge?” Galia laughed, impressed.
“And you still have so much to teach me,” Deidra winked. She turned and left before Galia’s perfect smile could turn somber. Before she could turn to her taxotrol bottle.
Alone, in the dark, Galia twisted off the lid. Six pills rattled around in the bottom. It was all she had left, after her overdose in the Thruway. Without Rey, they were her very last.
“I’ll… get you another,” said one of six dancing illusions of Clarabelle. Deidra couldn’t keep them straight anymore, with eight empty shots flipped on their heads before her. Or was it nine? Every time she tried to count them, she got lost.
At least Clarabelle understood. This was Deidra’s last chance to enjoy the simple pleasures she never would as a servant, if she didn’t win. Or as breathing human, if she didn’t survive the last event. The namesake of the competition - the Olympia itself. Deidra never wished more for company. She might know what to do, instead of drinking herself down a black pit of nihilism, if Galia were there. She hadn’t seen her in three hours, and already hope had been replaced with liquor in her gut. When the flash of a green exosuit appeared beside her, Deidra assumed it was another hallucination. Then that hallucination put its hand on her shoulder.
“That was a damn fool thing to do. Challenging that monster,” said the Terra Eagle. Deidra brushed away the arm she now felt was real.
“Yeah, well, it’s a damn fool thing to gamble yourself into a deathtrap. Guess it’s in my blood,” she spat, with all the gusto nine shots could give. The Terra Eagle went quiet for a while. Much as she missed Jonas, she couldn’t think of a reason to disagree. Her yellow scanner line ran up and down the daughter of her love, while the screen behind the bar played the latest statistics. It was Daniel’s 70 against the Dreamweaver’s 17, without an actual Dreamweaver, now.
“You’ve seen enough Olympias in your career to know what’s next,” said the Terra Eagle eventually.
“Boom!” Deidra acted out the final challenge with the hammer of two fists. Her glasses rattled on impact. Except, once one of the combatants destabilized the core of the planet by claiming the Gold Medal, Ares would do more than just rattle. Boom, was a perfect but understated description.
“How do you plan to outrun that, or Daniel, without a ship?” asked the Eagle, quietly, so as not to alert the man smirking quietly in the corner. He’d had his pinstriped suit patched back to perfection.
“I don’t know, Kayn!” Deidra blurted her true name, louder than she meant to, “I know that competing… is my only choice. Not just for me.” The Eagle looked away from her. Her yellow line became a dot that zipped around the room, in search of anything to
say, anything to help. “I know now, you didn’t kill my dad,” Deidra surprised her with, “It’s just too easy to blame you, when you blame yourself. That guy, Daniel… it was him. I… appreciate whatever it is you’re trying to do, help maybe? But you can’t. So… I’d like to be alone with the bottom of my bottle, please.”
“Maybe she can,” said Clarabelle. Where she soared in from, Deidra hadn’t the foggiest. “She has something you need, after all.”
“They won’t allow me to donate my ship to another crew, DeLuce,” the Terra Eagle countered.
“No, they won’t,” Clarabelle said, though she disappeared with a smirk that said it didn’t matter.
Deidra was busy reorienting her dizzy eyes after glancing back and forth between them, when a crisp clink rang throughout the Forge. A single note, so distinct in its frequency and resonance, that it silenced the whole bar. Deidra fumbled in vain to turn her stool several times before the Eagle did it for her. When Deidra saw the source of the noise, she arched her back over the bar. She scuffed her boots on the floor, she tipped her stool, anything to get away from the man in the center of the bar. The Eagle discreetly tilted her back upright before anyone could notice. The long, high note softened but continued to ring, from the gold-rimmed, crystal glass of Koslav Gold himself. He handed his solid gold spoon to an assistant with the third nicest suit in the room, with Daniel in the running. He pinched his glass in two fingers to stop the note, then raised it to the crowd.
“A toast. To Daniel. To Galia Hattel and Deidra Benier,” Koslav’s thin voice projected surprisingly well over the crowd of spectators. It helped that every last one of them held in their breath. “To one of the most unconventional Olympia Gold competitions… even I have ever seen. And, to those we lost in it.” With this, he raised his glass and tilted it back.
“To those we lost!” the Forge resounded. To ninety percent of the bar, that meant their favorite crew. Someone they put money on, or just a body they liked to watch on screen. To the other ten, the ones like Deidra, the Terra Eagle, Clarabelle - it meant someone they loved. A best friend. A brother. A lover.
